Vicarious
by mgcrtr
Summary: Vicarious: Acting or done for another. - A type of character study.


**Disclaimer:** Not mine. :(

...

They are a vicarious group. Their actions are not their own; they're told to do things and all they do is do, following someone else's whim, someone else's will. They do what is told, do what is demanded of them in not even their own way.

...

When Kaldur is told his tactics for training the team are not rigorous enough, he writes up a new regiment and submits it for review. He takes the edits of the schedule and implements them, knowing that they are not mere suggestion.

At five in the morning, he calls up everyone and demands to know why they are not present in the training room. He yells himself hoarse by the time six thirty rolls around - he shouts at them whenever he thinks giving up is on their mind, when he believes they believe they cannot sustain the activity, but they can. They must only hurt themselves a little more.

They cannot be afraid of pain.

He yells if they do not try hard enough or maybe they do, but still he screams at them, hoping they shall push forward an extra step - because Batman told him that he is their team leader, not their friend. If the team is to perish in battle, it will be because of him, their leader, because of his failure to train them, of being soft because he wants to be "friends". He is the one who will ultimately decide whether they shall live or die, the one who will give them, force them to retain, the skills that will keep them from ever searching Death.

At six thirty-five Kid Flash stops trying to crack jokes; Miss Martian begins to cry; Superboy drops any semblance of control; Artemis curses at him. And then as he keeps telling them to work harder, that they are not trying, that they are going to be the death of each other! - They quiet.

After six forty – sweating, hot, frustrated, demolished - Kaldur does not wonder why Batman prefers to work alone, was not keen on the generation of partners. Kaldur no longer wonders why Batman trains Robin so hard, why the youngest is the only one who does not voice his complaints of the impromptu training, takes Kaldur's new method with a still silence. Maybe he understands. Maybe he is the better leader; Batman perhaps has already told Robin that the leader is the one who kills his teammates or lets them live.

When Kaldur dismisses the team at six forty-five, no one speaks to him, looks at him, and Kaldur tells himself it is better that he is the leader and that the others are not. He is oldest. He can take the silence and the looks and the hatred as long as they do not die because of him.

He is a vicarious boy, not even believing there could be another way, hurting them the way Batman tells him to.

...

M'gann can't do a lot of things, especially concerning appearance.

She's not allowed to be gorgeous, the way that Earth has made gorgeous. She is not allowed to be a size double zero with big breasts and long blonde hair.

She's not allowed to look like Artemis.

Or Conner or Robin or Wally or anyone in the League or out of the League (unless it is demanded of her). She must stay between five foot and five foot six inches. Her hair is not allowed to be styled just by command. She has to learn to hand style it with bobby-pins and hairclips and gel and hairspray. The way Earth girls do it. She cannot change her civilian clothing by morphing. She must use Earth clothes.

Her autonomy must be a hundred percent correct. She had to open dead bodies and read books to stimulate her human self. Outward appearance is not enough for her secret identity.

She must do this for the League to accept her, to not worry about her and breathe down her neck. But they don't believe in books; they believe in experience. They find a girl M'gann's Earth age who is willing to let M'gann to press fingers into her and see the reactions.

When the League finds out that M'gann morphed (for fun) into the other mentors of the team; they limit her powers of morphing for a week. She can't morph into anyone but Miss Martian and M'gann M'orzz. She doesn't know how the League limits her. When she tries, she can't. So she doesn't, because she doesn't want the feeling of emptiness, of helplessness.

A part is cut away from her.

When the week is up, she never morphs again.

Not without the League's say so.

Robin's captured one day; he's just gone. A kid at Artemis's school goes missing too (Artemis tells M'gann, but it's not an international crisis for the League). M'gann can feel Robin's mind slipping into darkness, can feel him screaming in pain, and she can save him. She can dip into his mind and protect it from all the horrors! She will see his past and present when she does, but he won't hurt anymore, and she will find his location and – Batman tells her no.

She must look like Robin and go out like Robin at night. Something about his identity being compromised, that Batman cannot look unprotected, that Robin is more important in the scheme of things.

It hurts to morph. So long she had only ever been in two almost identical forms. She stands on Gotham rooftops as the team saves Robin, the team minus her; her who jumps around trying to fly like Robin can with no powers.

She now changes only on command, tears her fibers apart with only a word.

If she needs to look like a villain, she does. They pull her out of team missions, pull her from Mt. Justice – her home, her safe place – when no one is seeking her attention.

She is their vicarious puppet.

...

Conner has strength.

The League uses that. They use that and the fact that they don't think he has that much in the way of brains.

They send him out on missions solely to make taking down a building easier.

Need that train station demolished? They snicker to themselves and tell Superboy that there's a trapped dog inside; they tell him to irescue/i it.

And Conner does. All he wants is a little acceptance.

That's all he wants!

But destruction doesn't give him that. The League is no better than Cadmus, sending him out to do a construction crew's job. The G-Gnomes think that he is better off, that his work, his life is more fulfilling than their menial labor. It isn't.

When he tries to learn how to use a bow like Artemis or flip like Robin, Black Canary tells him no, leads him back to punching things with all the strength he has. She doesn't even teach him the physics behind how he should punch to deliver the most force. Wally has to teach him that. He isn't taught how to be light on his feet or run from a bomb, because he is a man of steel and an explosion can't kill him.

But it hurts. And it distracts him. He wants to be able to fight like everyone else! To dodge and run and jump and pick locks. He wants to learn strategy. But he is just the League's vicarious wrecking ball.

...

If Wally really wanted to get with M'gann, he would.

It's what he specializes in, forming relationships where he has all the power and gets what he wants. He knows how to make the other person feel loved.

The League schooled him in it after all.

But he has morals. Hates doing it.

The League must think he doesn't have any ethics, must think he can't be emotionally… emotionally attached. He left his parents, after all, without too many tears. Or maybe the League thinks they're doing him a favor, giving the hormonal teenager with super speed, super recovery an… outlet.

Girls, guys, it doesn't matter to the League. Let Wally mess with other teens' feelings. Two, three, five at a time; who cares?

What do the girls need? A boy who believes in them? Thinks they're pretty all the time? Thinks they're funny and smart and don't need to change a thing? Do they want flowers? Help in school?

What do guys need? The same thing? A little more tough love? Someone they can beat at sports? A bro?

Wally campuses the new recruits for the League, introduces the kids with the new superpowers to the League – civilian legends - and their new duty, to thrill and safety, to compassion and passion. Passion. Wally has to show them a lot of that to get them to open up, to tell him their fears and worries and weaknesses and their newfound powers – how they work, how they got them, what they've done, what they want to do. What's their asking price? Does their mother need to be able to walk again? Do they want to save their siblings? Open a library? Put out fires?

Finally, they have someone who listens and never tells them to shut up and believes in their dreams like they do.

Wally is the one the League sends in to seduce the secrets out. It's a mind game that even M'gann couldn't match him at. He promises himself to them, and then the League makes him disappear because it would do no good for him to hang around, becoming emotional baggage.

Not that he would be that hard to find if they searched for him – but they don't, because Wally knows how to play the game. To make sure they never _want_ to come looking for him.

Wally might not be hot like Conner or dazzling like Robin, but people want someone who cares and Wally has learned that only listening is almost enough.

Almost enough.

He just needs to give up his secret again and again and again. Then mutual trust just flows, and the kids talk and talk and talk.

Wally's pretty sure he has the only secret identity that isn't a secret anymore. Not that the League cares, the information found by the vicarious love affairs.

...

Artemis is the mole because they told her to be.

She slips away at night, back to Gotham like sleeping at home is all she's going to do, but when does she ever sleep? She tells her mother goodnight and then says good morning to the fire escape as she climbs through her window, because the moon has just risen in the east and the day with her father is beginning.

She goes to him and feeds him secrets; she feeds his craving, groping mind with knowledge that only the team should know.

If the League doesn't tell her to stop soon, she's going to be in too deep to get out. Soon, if Sportsmaster gives her the "honor" of torturing a captured teammate, she will have to do it. Soon, she needs to be told a stopping point, where she can say no to playing along, soon the League needs to make a move that will end her second twelve hour day.

She's waiting to find the stopping point.

She's a little scared when she doesn't find it at death when her father brings her to a wharf for practicing her shot. There's a kid walking alone. It's almost poetic, walking by the water in the moonlight, death upon him. A supposed vigilant ready to kill him, an angel of death.

She waits for a sign. Any type of sign.

She's told the League that this is what was going to happen. Tonight. She even told them tonight.

She's going to have to kill the kid. And then kill them, the team. If the League won't stop her here, they won't stop her there.

She waits day after day with a halting breath for when Sportsmaster captures one of her team, they realize she's the mole, and the League doesn't tell her killing is not going too far.

She notches the arrow, listens to where it should go – in the kneecap (not a killing shot, not a killing shot) to prolong death, to teach her how to properly torture.

She sends her shot into the heart.

The kid goes down without a sound, like Wally or Robin or M'gann or Kaldur will if she shoots them. They are all only children.

She bites her lip until it bleeds, taking her father's shot into her knee. He teaches her the lesson she messed up on her instead of the kid.

She's a vicarious one, that Artemis.

...

The League makes Robin Young Justice's failsafe.

He has kryptonite in case Conner gets out of hand.

He has a flare if M'gann can't control herself.

He has an EMP for Kaldur.

He has poison for Wally.

He knows where Artemis's mother lives if persuasion is necessary.

Batman has the detonator for the ticking tracker inside Robin.

Vicarious Robin is really nothing more than a backup plan if this whole "Young Justice" thing doesn't work out.

...  
_fin._


End file.
